لغات پیشرفته ی انگلیسی در مورد مذاکره و تجارت

One day you might find yourself negotiating in English. It’s difficult but, in today’s lesson, we’re going to do some idioms related to negotiating about power and control.

To learn these idioms, we’ll look at the story of Mr. Pizza. I’m not always creative. Mr. Pizza has a pizza shop but recently, this pizza shop business has had problems. No one likes the pizza. He’s really having problems and now he has no money. He has to pay his bills but he can’t because the business is very bad. So, maybe he has to sell his business.

Mr. Money Chin, he has lots of money and he wants to buy this business. He knows that this guy doesn’t have many options. He must sell his business. So, he has all of the power. The idiom for this, for having all of the power in a situation to have total control; he has the upper hand, he has the high ground. High ground, that is a term from war. For example, in war, in a fight if you are up high and someone is low, you have more control; you have the high ground.

Not only in negotiations in business, you could use it in any situation where you have the control, you have the advantage. For example in an interview for a job, there are two candidates. One person has better qualifications or better experience, this person has the upper hand. Now Mr. Money Chin is saying, Mr. Pizza, you have a problem. This situation, there’s no option for escape. You are under pressure. You’re trapped. You must do what I tell you, basically. In this case, when someone does that to a person, they give them no options.

We talk about being against a wall, your back is against a wall, literally meaning, you have no option to escape. His back is against the wall or he has got him against the wall. You will definitely see this expression in the news when, for example we talk about one country’s government, having more control over another country’s government and they don’t give them many options to fix their problem.

For example, this pizza shop is a family business. Mr. Pizza runs the shop with his daughter, pepperoni and pepperoni doesn’t want her father to sell the shop. Of course she doesn’t want him to sell. It’s the family business, it’s very special. But, for him he knows, well, to be honest, I have no options. I have no control. When someone is powerless to do anything in a situation, we say this: my hands are tied. I cannot do anything. I can’t fix this situation because my hands, I can’t use them, quite literally. However, in this situation it just means, he doesn’t have any options. He doesn’t have any control. Sorry, my hands are tied. But pepperoni is not going to give up. Come on dad, we can make this business work. And actually, she convinced him, he changed his mind. Okay, I won’t sell. When you convince someone, not to do something, we say this: you talk someone out of doing something. So in this case, she convinced him, not, remember this is a negative; she convinced him not to sell. She talked him out of selling. Also important, make sure that verb is “ing”.

So, Mr. Pizza goes back to Mr. Money Chin and he says, I’m not selling. He’s fighting now, he’s defending. So, we say he’s standing his ground. We can also say, he’s pushing back. Remember he was pushed against the wall but now, he’s defending, he’s pushing back. Also you can say, he’s holding firm. To hold firm means your opinion doesn’t change, your position doesn’t change. Doesn’t matter what happens or what someone says. It’s like being stubborn but, it’s it doesn’t have that negative feeling to it.

Mr. Money Chin changes his offer. Now, he is offering ten million for the business. Naturally Mr. Pizza is very shocked. Ten million, I mean yes, please, 10 million, thanks. He changed his mind, he convinced him to do something. He convinced him to sell. Do you remember before? We said, his daughter pepperoni, she talked him out of selling, to mean not do something. But in this case, he convinced him to do something, in the positive. He talked him into selling. He talked him into selling. So just remember, to convince someone not to do something, you talk them out of doing something. But, when you convince someone to do something, you talk them into doing it, easy.

So next time you have a negotiation in English, remember these idioms about power and control.